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Ambulance Victoria and Box Hill Hospital; super-carers

My son often reminds me that I’ve managed to get to 45 years old without breaking a bone.

After he’d heard about my crash on Monday night – and after checking that the bike was okay – he was most concerned with whether or not I had ended my 45 year-old non-breaking bone record.

Unfortunatley, I still can’t say whether it held or not. The docs tell me they couldn’t actually find anything broken but with the pain I’ve been in, they determined that there must be. I thought we were further advanced than that.

On that basis, I’m going to conclude that my record still stands. Maybe it’s just that I’m a big sook when it comes to pain.

I can tell you though – I’ve never been in more of it than I was throughout Monday night… and it started a micro-second after my left pedal hit that stump, or log, or rock – or whatever the hell it was that was in the path of my left foot.

Night riding always carries a few more challenges; that’s why it’s so much fun. One of those challenges is that you don’t see everything with lights at night that you see with the sun during the day. A bump – a stump – a rock – a tussock; all of them just a little harder to handle. Luckily the technology offered these days with high performing shocks and forks helps us deal with these unexpected obstacles reasonably efficiently… most of the time. ; )

I remember going out for my first night ride one winter on rigid carbon forks. They failed to soak up a hit at speed on Dickies Loop (Yarra Trails) and I went scooting down the track at speed without my bike. That time I fell efficiently but swore I would ride with proper forks in future. Monday I wasn’t so lucky… or so clever… or whatever.

My 100+ kilo weight hit the deck chest first – without any chance of getting the hands out first. My left side took all the impact having gone over the bars (OTB) at about 30+ kilometres per hour. I hit a mound of compacted dirt that felt like concrete, and had the wind knocked out of me like never before. Quite scary really… and I feel very sorry for any nearby possums or wallabies who would have been immediately terrified by a bellowing monster. Oh – I made some noise!

After what felt like ten minutes to me – but was probably just a minute or so – I began to breath again and take stock of my predicament. Shit… I’m in the middle of the bush, on my own, miles from the car (or any car!), just as far from any road, nobody can get in to get me – WHAT THE…?

I scared a few more wombats and decided I felt okay to get up. I managed to roll back out to the car which was on Yarra Glen Road about 4 ks away – then stupidly drive to my brothers in Kangaroo Ground. By the time I got there I was feeling seriously ill and was a bit worried about what might be going on inside me so I thereafter conceded to be cared for by others. Tim rang the ambos and it wasn’t long before I was sucking on a green whistle and stupidly grinning at my brother and his children with thanks.

Ash and Josh (the ambos) took great care of me all the way to Box Hill Hospital where, by my arrival, I had consumed a whole green whistle and 30mg of morphine – first time ever… good stuff! Ash and I even had time to chat about our kids school plans; only God knows what I actually said (…and Ash I s’pose).

Later in the hospital, when I was being cared for by a rather hottish young doctor (yes… female – small pleasures), my boss rang me for a welfare check. He later mentioned that I was clearly ‘on something‘ at the time of that earlier conversation and my voice had been ‘quite melodic‘.

By my discharge at 11 Tuesday morning, they’d done pretty much everything to me and still couldn’t actually identify, with any certainty, the cause of my agony… I reckon it was agony anyway. The crunching I feel in my chest since and the serious pain associated with that, has convinced me that maybe I have broken my good record (sorry Jack).

Mum has told me I need to stop being so adventurous and many have told me I’m an idiot for going out there on my own (I still need that EPURB). In my defence, I did tell someone exactly where I was and what time to come looking for me if I didn’t call. True to his word (not that I actually spoke to him), Mick rang me at 8.01pm having not heard from me at the allocated time of 8.00pm. I was in the back of the ambulance chatting to Ash and – having been distracted by the green whistle – had forgotten all about ringing Mick.

Lucky I was okay! Thanks for the call mate.

(FYI – This happened kind of half-way between Watsons Creek and Smiths Gully out to the north-east of Melbourne. Here’s my Strava route for anyone interested – I still managed to download it… http://app.strava.com/rides/6951367 )

Vlad – just letting you know I was in the all-important kit mate. Lucky… coz all the wombats, possums and wallabies will be in next week to buy a new Trek. And for your peace of mind – I didn’t let them cut if off me either!

Yeah… dodgy knees are pretty much par for the course with MTBers aren’t they. Usually we know how to fall so as just to take off a bit of skin rather than cop a serious injury. Unfortunatley on this occasion I stuffed it up a bit! Mending well though. Feeling okay already although might just go the road bike for a couple of weeks!

Hi Diesel, I heard about your otb moment from the 6am-ers. Hope you are on the mend fast. Reading about night mtb’ing on your own at night is a bit risky but hey its fun isn’t it? I’ve been doing it for a few years now and you rarely see anybody but do see and have to dodge the wildlife. Get well soon.

Thanks Chris. Getting better but not quick enough! Yep… mum, wife and kids have all loudly informed me about how stupid I am. Apparently I also got a lecture from my father-in-law but I had 40mg of morphine in my system at the time so I can’t remember what he said!